The poetry is moving along and we’ve passed the half way mark in the 100 Images challenge. Somewhere near the 50 mark I hit a transition with one of the weaving characters in the under narrative of the poems, a woman who deals with some sort of identity issue. I have no desire to go into the characters, as the poetry deals with them, but I did note a relaxation to the tone and relationships after the narrative arc hit.

The male character is taking over now. His weave comes with an old woman, around whom the man seems to circulate, and Carianne’s work is gluing the images together and inspiring their shape.

It’s time to work on some Jintishi forms. These, in English, are almost impossible to resemble from the Chinese as this Tang Dynasty form is heavily built around Chinese character limitations and I don’t know of any relevant English equivalents. So, I’ll be working with a 7 to 10 syllable line and eight lines broken into two quatrains and estimating with the tonal considerations of the form.

Whenever I need a poetry boost, I take up Frank Stanford. His language forces the brain into interesting tilts. He teaches the eyes to swim faster.

For example, from Their Names Are Spoken:

We dream on
Now night a cool moss
On the undersides of the cold ground
Keeps growing on the stones

This is amazing. To position night like this is to take a common element and make it live again. Stanford makes you want to run and write poetry. One measure: if it makes you want to write, it’s a keeper. The writer’s writer makes you want to write.

Jesse Abbot is getting into the game.

To me it’s an interesting process. Prior to Carianne uploading her image, I take lots of time in the morning writing extensions to existing poetry, playing with new ideas, and worrying about the people who are emerging in a narrative working between the images, such as a cave woman who sits in a city street making things in the streets.

Typically, this work is preparation for the art to come, mental exercise, study. However, the voices reverberating through this world often don’t immediately correspond with the image Carianne has created. But the study is important for tone and language play. A wonderful frame for the working day. And two more variation tanka (brief 10th century Japanese style) forms to go.

Now, here’s to writing poetry in Pittsburgh.

A couple of shots of Carianne in her studio and I in mine.

Where the 100 Images Project is being made.

Mark Bernstein poses an interesting mortality question. It’s also about the mathematics of reading. In a lifetime, how many books can we read, and what now constitutes “book” or “book knowledge” besides the obvious package? At the moment, I’m reading Jesper Juul’s half-real because John game me a copy. I’m also reading several hypertexts, including Coulon’s The Reprover, and Don Quixote.

I skipped much of the chapters in Juul’s book after reading partway through them because they didn’t grab me so I probably wont read it in its entirety.

I understand the quandary. Many of us walk by the stack knowing full well that something else is going to come along. We feel like we’re missing something. We better move quick. It’s also about commitment, responsibility, and finishing what we decide to start. Then I remember what a wise person said: Everything’s in Alice Munro and everything’s in Beowulf and everything’s in Bashō. That’s pretty complicated, I remember saying. He said, Bashō already said that. I’m paraphrasing, of course.

Bryan Carroll getting into the poetry game:

Watersides

a tattoo is stained glass
the view over the hood.
Might have been summertime
just as the weather would
before the orange, blue and yellow.
I hope you don’t mind the ink.
I can only imagine.
what my eyes will see
on this stained waterside.

The 100 poems will be going up at Media Play. I must slowly catch up to Carianne.

This will be a fun and challenging exercise.